Tom Cruise continues to show us he isn’t getting old by strapping on a gun-totting exoskeleton to blast some aliens. But luckily for him his co-star is excellent and the film’s implementation is entertaining. In our very near future aliens arrive via meteor shower. Before long the entirety of greater Europe has been reduced to…
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Review: Pain and Gain
You actually have to remind yourself this is a Michael Bay movie. Mark Wahlberg is Daniel Lugo, a bodybuilder and fitness trainer who, inspired by little more than movies, brings together two equally dimwitted friends in a bid to attain his American Dream. How? By kidnapping a man and stealing all of his money. But…
Review: The Family
A funny, if a little glib, black comedy from one of my favourite directors Luc Besson. Giomatti Manzoni (Robert De Niro) is a husband and father and once respected head of an American mafia clan, only now he and his family find themselves relocated to France under a witness protection scheme. While mafia hitmen look…
Review: Insidious – Chapter 2
Oh James Wan… no matter how hard you try you still aren’t convincing any scares out of me. Following the events of the first film, Chapter 2 follows the Lambert family as they attempt to leave the horrors behind by moving into father Josh Lambert’s old home. But when they do it is apparent something…
Review: Godzilla (2014)
I didn’t like my first attempt at reviewing Gareth Edwards’ Godzilla, it was too much of a rant for my tastes, so I took the time to watch the film again. It really has been 2014’s most divisive film yet and I wanted to be sure of my original opinion (You can’t say I’m not…
Remake Rumble Review: The Great Gatsby
Welcome to a new review section of Cinema Cocoa, Remake Rumble, where I review a film that has been remade. That’s right, two films for the price of one on Cinema Cocoa! The Baz Luhrmann adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel “The Great Gatsby” was something I was keen to review, but I wanted…
Review: The Machine
A simple and fairly by-the-numbers science fiction thriller that stands up to criticism with elegant design, soundtrack and competent cinematography. The Machine is set in a near future where a cold war between the west and China has plunged the world into deep recession. Vincent McCarthy, an AI engineer, works for the Department of Defense…
Review: Idiocracy
As a comedy, Idiocracy isn’t a blow-out winner, but as a film made in 2005 it is an alarmingly accurate, entertaining and almost sobering vision of how completely hopeless humanity’s future really is. Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson) is an incredibly average man, so average that he excels and fails at nothing, he lives shut away…
Review: The Grand Budapest Hotel
Director Wes Anderson has ever really wow’ed me with any of his previous works, often they are too wild and unprecedented, but with The Grand Budapest Hotel he has excelled. Our story begins from the perspective of a writer who, in visiting a rundown Hotel, meets the owner who tells a tale of the Hotel’s…
Review: 300 – Rise of an Empire
It’s time to trim your beards, wear eyeliner, shave off your chest hair and bludgeon and stab people to death in slow motion! With 300: Rise of an Empire, I’ve also reviewed the 2007 Zack Snyder film. 300: Rise of an Empire Here’s a good example of when a director puts his name only to…